Cohere vs Suno: Founders, CEOs and History
Cohere was founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, Nick Frosst and is led by Aidan Gomez. Suno was founded in 2022 by Mikey Shulman, Keenan Freyberg, Martin Camacho and is led by Mikey Shulman.
Company facts
Founders
Cohere
Aidan Gomez
Aidan Gomez is co-founder and CEO of Cohere. As a Google Brain intern he co-authored 'Attention Is All You Need' (2017) with seven other researchers.
Ivan Zhang
Ivan Zhang is a co-founder of Cohere. Before Cohere he co-founded FOR.ai, an open research collective, with Aidan Gomez. At Cohere he has worked on the engineering and infrastructure that serve the company's models to enterprise customers.
Nick Frosst
Nick Frosst is a co-founder of Cohere. He was Geoffrey Hinton's first hire at Google Brain's Toronto lab, where he published research on capsule networks and adversarial robustness.
Suno
Mikey Shulman
Mikey Shulman co-founded Suno in 2023. A brilliant physicist who previously led machine learning research at Kensho Technologies, he brought absolutely critical expertise in processing massive, complex datasets.
Keenan Freyberg
Keenan Freyberg co-founded Suno in 2023. Also a key veteran from Kensho, he played a massive role in the operational scaling and productization of the underlying AI models, heavily contributing to the incredibly simple, user-friendly web interface that sparked…
Martin Camacho
Martin Camacho co-founded Suno in 2023. As a highly skilled machine learning engineer with a deep passion for music, he was absolutely instrumental in training the complex audio diffusion models required to make AI-generated vocals sound genuinely human and em…
Georg Kucsko
Georg Kucsko co-founded Suno in 2023. Bringing massive expertise in highly complex mathematical modeling from his time at Kensho, he helped design the underlying neural network architecture capable of understanding musical theory, rhythm, and structural compos…
CEOs and their tenures
Cohere
- Aidan Gomez2019–present
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As co-founder and CEO, he leveraged his status as a co-author of the seminal 'Attention Is All You Need' paper to secure massive funding from Oracle and Nvidia.
Source - Martin Kon2023–2025
President and Chief Operating Officer
As President and COO (hired away from YouTube), he professionalized the startup's go-to-market strategy, driving significant ARR growth in the highly competitive B2B AI sector.
Source - Joelle Pineau2025–present
Chief AI Officer
Her academic research heavily influences the foundational reinforcement learning techniques used by enterprise AI startups globally.
Source - Francois Chadwick2025–present
Chief Financial Officer
He brought deep operational expertise from his time at Uber to manage the rapid headcount expansion of the AI startup.
Source - Phil Blunsom2025–present
Chief Technology Officer
As Chief Scientist, he directs the core research team, ensuring Cohere's models remain competitive with OpenAI and Anthropic in massive-scale language understanding.
Source
Suno
- Mikey Shulman2022–present
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Mikey Shulman co-founded Suno with fellow machine learning experts. As CEO, he led the creation of the breakthrough generative AI platform capable of producing high-quality, full-length songs with vocals and instrumentation from simple text prompts.
Source - Georg Kucsko2022–2024
Co-Founder
As a key Co-Founder, he manages the absolute bleeding-edge research required to keep Suno ahead of massive tech giants entering the audio generation space.
Source
Timeline: Cohere and Suno side by side
2017Cohere
Aidan Gomez Co-Authors 'Attention Is All You Need'
Aidan Gomez and Google Brain colleagues published the landmark paper introducing the Transformer architecture.
2019Cohere
Cohere Founded in Toronto
Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frosst founded Cohere to build privacy-first enterprise language models.
2021Cohere
Series A Funding & Multi-Cloud Platform Launch
Raised $40 million Series A led by Index Ventures, debuting its commercial developer API for text generation and embeddings.
2022Cohere
Strategic Partnership with Oracle Cloud
Formed historic alliance with Oracle, making Cohere the primary generative AI engine embedded across Oracle Cloud Applications.
2022Cohere
Series B Funding
Cohere raised $125 million in a Series B round led by Tiger Global in February 2022.
2022Suno
Suno Founded in Cambridge by Kensho Veterans
Mikey Shulman, Keenan Freyberg, Martin Camacho, and Georg Kucsko incorporated Suno to pioneer generative audio intelligence.
2023Cohere
Series C Funding at $2.2B Valuation Led by Inovia
Raised $270 million in Series C funding with participation from NVIDIA, Oracle, and Salesforce Ventures.
2023Cohere
Debut on Amazon Bedrock & Release of Embed v3
Integrated models into Amazon Bedrock and launched Embed v3, establishing leadership in multilingual search.
2023Suno
Bark Open-Source Audio Model Released
Released Bark, a very popular open-source text-to-audio model demonstrating expressive speech, singing, and background noise.
2023Suno
Launch of Web Platform & Discord Community
Launched the initial generative music web application, quickly reaching millions of viral songs across social media.
2023Suno
Microsoft Copilot Partnership
Partnered with Microsoft to integrate Suno music generation directly into the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem.
2024Cohere
Launch of Command R and Command R+
Released Command R (March) and Command R+ (April) for enterprise RAG and tool use.
2024Cohere
$500M Series D Funding at $5.5B Valuation
Closed $500 million Series D led by PSP Investments, with participation from Cisco, AMD, and Fujitsu, reaching a $5.5B valuation.
2024Suno
Suno v3 Launch & $125M Series B at $500M Valuation
Released Suno v3 and closed a $125M Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners at a reported $500M valuation.
2024Suno
RIAA Copyright Lawsuit Filed & Defense of Fair Use
Major record labels filed federal copyright lawsuits; Suno defended its technology under established legal fair use doctrines.
2024Suno
Launch of Suno Mobile App and v4 Model
Released iOS and Android apps and debuted the v4 model in late 2024.
2025Cohere
Command A, North and ~$7B valuation
Launched Command A and North, raised $500 million at $6.8 billion, and reached about $7 billion after a September extension.
2025Suno
$250M Series C at $2.45B Valuation
Closed a $250M Series C led by Menlo Ventures with NVentures, Hallwood Media, Lightspeed and Matrix on November 19, 2025.
2025Suno
Warner Music Settlement, Licensing Deal and Songkick Purchase
Warner Music Group settled its copyright suit, agreed to license music for future Suno models and sold Songkick to Suno in November 2025.
2026Cohere
Reports $240M ARR for 2025
Investor memo showed about $240 million ARR, beating its $200 million target.
2026Cohere
Aleph Alpha merger announced and signed
Announced in April 2026 with a ~$565 million (€500 million) Schwarz Group commitment; definitive agreement signed September 16, 2026.
2026Suno
2 Million Paid Subscribers and $300M ARR
Suno reported 2 million paid subscribers and $300M in annual recurring revenue in February 2026.
2026Suno
$400M Series D at $5.4B Valuation
Raised a $400M Series D led by Bond Capital in June 2026, more than doubling its valuation in about seven months.
2026Suno
Suno v6 Launch and Second UMG/Sony Lawsuit
Launched v6 on September 9, 2026, built with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe; Universal and Sony filed a second suit on September 18.
Acquisitions
Cohere
- Reliant AI2026Undisclosed
- Aleph Alpha2026Undisclosed
- Ottogrid2025Undisclosed
Suno
- Songkick2025Undisclosed
- WavTool2025Undisclosed
- Bark Speech & Audio Generation Research IP2023Undisclosed
Questions about Cohere vs Suno
Who is the CEO of Cohere Inc. and Suno?
Cohere Inc. is led by Aidan Gomez and Suno is led by Mikey Shulman. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was Cohere Inc. founded vs Suno?
Cohere Inc. was founded in 2019 — 3 years before Suno, which was founded in 2022. Cohere Inc.'s longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Suno.
How many employees does Cohere Inc. have compared to Suno?
Cohere Inc. employs approximately 350 people. A verified employee count for Suno is not currently available.
Where are Cohere Inc. and Suno headquartered?
Cohere Inc. is headquartered in Canada and Suno is headquartered in United States. Their different home markets mean they may face different regulatory frameworks, tax regimes, and currency exposure.
Who founded Cohere Inc. and Suno?
Cohere Inc. was founded by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, Nick Frosst. Suno was founded by Mikey Shulman, Keenan Freyberg, Martin Camacho, Georg Kucsko.
Which company has a longer operating history — Cohere Inc. or Suno?
Cohere Inc. has been operating for approximately 7 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Suno has been in operation for around 4 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Cohere vs Suno overview